


Strangers On a Plane

by VirginiaPendragon



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 11:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18009782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VirginiaPendragon/pseuds/VirginiaPendragon
Summary: The first four lines from paragraph v. (the plane conversation scene featuring Morgan and Reid) are notably not mine. They’re from a deleted scene, originally from Season 2, Episode 16, “Fear And Loathing”, if you were wondering. Do. Not. Sue. Kthx.





	Strangers On a Plane

****

 

“ **STRANGERS** **ON A PLANE** ”

 

  _  
‘...and his eyes had that splendid innocence, that opaque blue candour of the satanically fallen.’_

_(John Fowles ~_ _“_ _The French Lieutenant’s Woman_ _”_ _)_

**i.**

 

Spencer is eighteen when he makes it a point to drive random long distances on Saturday night highways, even though he knows it doesn’t quite become him. But he does it anyway, if only to adjust to a loneliness which, he has decided, will keep him company for the rest of his virtually motherless life.

 

A degree of awareness he has reached with relatively little effort on his part.

 

Discreetly.

 

And accepted almost as peacefully.

 

**ii.**

 

At least until Hotch and Haley invite him to spend Christmas with them.

 

Hotch lets him fumble through jerky excuses for thirty-five seconds before he realizes all he has to do is put his son on the phone.

 

And it’s definitely a good thing Hotch is, well, _Hotch_ , Reid ponders two days later, while drying his face on the dark blue-green towels Haley has tastefully arranged for him in the guest bathroom of her parents’ Vermont cottage.

 

Because – of this he’s positive – in Hotch’s place, Morgan wouldn’t have passed up on the juicy opportunity to harp on the irony of Reid’s first unenthusiastic reaction to Jack, only to ultimately point out just how irremediably HotchnerBoys-whipped his friend is.

 

It’s so much a good thing that his boss is who he is that, if Reid were a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl—the one more people than he cares to admit see in him—he would confess it makes him want to adopt a dozen freaking puppies with Hotch.

 

\-----

 

 _“_ _I thought you hated the theatre._ _”_

_“_ _I do. I also hate the sight of blood, but it’s in my veins._ _”_

Haley can see it when both her husband and Spencer raise the corners of their mouths in the same barely-there smile of deep, shared understanding at the brilliant exchange on the small TV set.

 

Once _“_ _Limelight_ _”_ gives way to a blank screen, she gets up and stretches bony arms before pressing the stop and eject buttons on the old VCR. She places a tender—friendly? Reid chooses this, of all nights, to be one for wishful thinking—peck on Hotch’s mouth. “And try not to stay up all night, guys. When Jack wakes you up at 6 a.m., you’re going to need more energy than if you were pursuing one of your bad guys across the continent.” She chuckles.

 

Hotch drops his head back against the small couch he’s sharing with Reid and lets out an exaggerated, low groan, pinching the bridge of his nose for good theatrical measure. “Maybe it wasn’t so wise of you to accept our invitation, Spence. It’s going to be the longest Christmas day you’ve ever experienced, _my friend,_ ” he adds with a breathless laugh that is strangely not _Aaron_ and not quite _Hotchner_ , either.

 

And Reid’s intermittent insecurity would maybe gnaw at him and poke him uncomfortably in the ribs until he gives in and interprets Hotch’s joke as a signed-sealed-delivered confirmation that he has only invited him out of sheer holiday spirit, if not pity ( _aren’t we optimistic_ , _Spencer? Must be the Christmas atmosphere,_ he muses), knowing Reid would have spent their four days off duty alone, otherwise.

 

But those last two words—and how completely _different_ the ‘Spence’ nickname sounds when coming from Hotch’s lips rather than JJ’s—make him decide he prefers dwelling on the _tangibility_ in Hotch’s voice and on the nearness of him, instead.

 

So much so that, when Hotch opens his eyes and grins to the ceiling, Reid can’t help the happy glint in his own raw umber eyes and hopes he has a right to claim part of that fondness as his, if only to himself.

 

 

Then Hotch is up, pushing the battered VHS tape back in. “Sorry about that. Haley doesn’t know you’re _that_ much of a geek, ” he says with a light slap on Reid’s arm and a hearty smirk that just _begs_ for Spencer’s mock punch to his side and the sarcastic retort that ensues.

 

“Says the Chief of Rusty Coin Freaks United!”

 

This time, Reid knows the full-blown laugh that follows is for him and him alone.

 

Haley knows it, too. And she sighs resignedly into her son’s soft hair while the bittersweet score of _“_ _Modern_ _Times_ _”_ dissolves in the drowsy haze of her mind.

   


**iii.**

 

“So. How long have you been in love with our resident Mother Hen, huh?” Elle asks Reid at what can only be an ungodly hour on New Year’s Eve. She lands the question as chirpily and yet cautiously as if she were trying to steer a young girl away from a suspected rapist without cueing her into exactly what is going on. With a tinge of exhilaration in her voice that Reid, for all his profiling genius, doesn’t quite detect.

 

Possibly because he’s too busy choking on his overly-sugared coffee.

 

As soon as he stops coughing—and thank God Hotch is letting JJ humiliate him at darts thirty feet away!—a mask of horrified embarrassment replaces the cheerful frown that is his trademark facial expression. “Wh-what are you talking about?!”

 

“Don’t worry, Spencer. Your secret is safe with me,” she adds, patting his forearm with the mildly annoying fondness of an older sister.

 

“B-but there is no secret!!” He hopes his eyes aren’t actually bulging out as much as it feels like they are; and a distant, mocking regret for the time his mother spent to help him get over his stuttering _condition_ seeps through the thumping of bad hip-hop tunes.

 

“Right. I guess there isn’t one anymore.” She pauses to raise an eyebrow. “Unless you still want to pretend you do not TiVo _“_ _As The World Turns_ _”_ on a daily basis, that is.” A wink is all he’s granted before she gets up from her stool and leaves him, painfully dumbfounded, to join Derek, Penelope and Prentiss at the bar.

  


**iv.**

 

Six hours and twelve aspirins later, the team, minus Elle, of course—except it’s one of those days when it’s especially hard not to think of her as part of _The Team_ anymore—are back at the BAU headquarters, racking sleep-deprived brains in an attempt to predict the UnSub’s next move, on the meager basis of the puzzling victimology they’re presented with: “Three females: Chyler Crawford, 24, professional violinist from Philadelphia; Claire O’Reilly, 40, Bioethics teacher at the University of Pittsburgh; Kathryn Montgomery, 32, social worker from Allentown,” JJ recites.

 

To which Morgan groans and remarks how he could have lived without another Frank on _National Splitting Headache Day_.

 

\-----

 

“How can it not bother you? _Any_ of you?” Reid blurts out. He’s mindlessly nursing his third cup of coffee when Hotch raises shadowed eyes from the inevitable paperwork to a tilt of Reid’s head that implicates the rest of the team, although not in the immediate vicinity, in the question.

 

“What should?”

 

“The way people keep saying _your_ UnSub here and _your_ UnSub there?” Reid mistakes Hotch’s blank look for patronizing perplexity and hurries on to his self-conscious, “Never mind, I’m just…” —frustration palpable in his voice— “…It makes me feel kind of *dirty* when they spit it out at us like that. As if we were responsible for sociopaths’ and sadists’, um, ‘accomplishments’.”

 

“Don’t let it get to you too much; you know how terrified people crave for a willing scapegoat. And FBI profilers are ideal candidates for that, apparently,” Hotch comments dryly, his eyes not leaving the files he’s been poring over for twenty minutes. Then a thoughtful pause, and, “But, yeah, while I can’t answer for the others, it used to bother me, too,” he adds, this time letting his own gaze meet Reid’s intrigued one.

 

“When did it stop?”

 

And Hotch knows what Spencer really wants—needs—to know is _how_ it stopped.

 

Better yet, how to _make_ it stop. The up-surging, claustrophobic knot in his windpipe that every so often threatens to suffocate Reid in his sleep; that makes him spring up in undercover motel beds, unfairly alert at any goddamn hour of the night—only for Hotch to have to feign obliviousness to this last shred of Henkel’s unwanted legacy.

 

Hotch, forced to pretend he doesn’t hold his own breath - stiflingly warm with anger and pity and awe for this wonder boy - through the unbearably long minutes it takes Spencer to wind down and let sleep claim him back.

 

“When you saved yourself from Raphael. That’s when it stopped.” Hotch answers, his voice overcome with a grave uneasiness that makes Reid shudder more than the mention of his torturer itself.

 

**v.**

“What. You think you’re the only person around here who reads books?” When he catches Reid’s all-too-amused smirk over the shield of his own cards, Derek can’t help starting the one jet conversation he’s pretty sure he’s going to regret at some point or another.

 

  
“No, but… you never want to talk to *me* about books.”

 

“You think I’m sending her the wrong kind of message.” Morgan doesn’t even bother disguising it as a question.

 

“I *have* noticed that you guys are sitting next to each other at the round table, and I’ve seen her hanging out at your desk and I just realized if *I’m* noticing the stuff, it must be pretty darn obvious, right?”

 

“Mm-hmm. Let me get this straight, we sit next to each other like, say, you and Hotch do?” He elaborates, having decided that two can play this game. He stares playfully at Reid and is genuinely surprised when he can pinpoint the exact moment the kid starts fighting a losing battle to shake a violent shade of crimson off usually pale cheeks.

 

“Oh.” It’s all Morgan can add when it dawns on him that he just got so much more than he bargained for.

 

**vi.**

 

“Geez, why would anyone carve the Mars symbol on a woman’s belly?” JJ rhetorically wonders while spreading gory crime scene pictures on their surrogate round table at the Philadelphia police department; her free hand unconsciously reaching to rub her own stomach.

 

“Reid?” Gideon probes, turning to face him.

 

“Huh?”

 

“Any ideas?” He presses, with the stolid gesturing and attentive look even Emily has already grown familiar with.

 

“Um, yeah, I was thinking in which contexts the Mars and Venus symbology is most commonly used and, for some reason, the first thing that came to my mind was Genetics textbooks.”

 

“Leave it to you to come up with that before horoscopes,” Morgan quips.

 

“You think the UnSub’s a doctor?” JJ asks.

 

“Not necessarily. It could be any Med, Biology or Vet student, really. Or an agronomist, for that matter.”

 

“True. Still, it’s worth a shot,” Hotch says, while Gideon only nods. “Morgan, call Garcia.”

 

// Speak, my Sexy Little Pumpkin of Love. //

 

“Garcia, can you do some comparative medical research on the victims?”

 

// Er, is your skin the color of milk chocolate?! //

 

And Morgan is ever so thankful that said milk chocolate skin is there to prevent everyone else from seeing him blush a little. But he also can’t _not_ smile at the comic relief his girl never fails to provide. “I mean, see if they share any sort of genetic condition?”

 

// Sure thing, muffin. // They can all hear the unmistakable sound of frenetic typing.

// Get this. Our supposedly female victims are—um, were—in fact, male. It’s called-- //

 

“--AIS. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Better known as testicular feminization syndrome,” Reid finishes before she can take a full breath from across the phone line.

 

// Bingo. Ok, then. I’ll let Agent Genius take over my lecture, hot stuff. //

 

“Thanks, baby girl.”

 

“It’s an X-linked recessive genetic disorder—like hemophilia or color blindness,” Reid continues once Morgan’s clacked his mobile shut, “caused by mutations which make one XY fetus in 65,000 unable to respond to androgens. In other words--”

 

And this time it’s Hotch’s turn to finish the sentence, “--they look like females on the outside but, genetically, they’re males.”

“Pretty much, yeah. The person appears to be female but has no uterus, may have abdominal testicles, and usually has sparse armpit and pubic hair. At puberty, breasts develop, but, of course, menstruation and fertility do not. Which is what most often leads to its diagnosis.”

“That would explain the Mars symbol on the victims’ abdomen instead of the Venus one. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any creepier...” JJ sighs.

“Yeah. Now we only have to understand *why* the scumbag marked them like cows,” Emily adds grimly.

 

**vii.**

 

Haley finds it kind of ironic—or plain fucked up, really—thinking about having divorce papers delivered to Aaron on the grounds that _he’s just never there_ when, paradoxically enough, she’s merely tired of feeling like the one who keeps him on a domestic leash.

 

What makes it all even odder is knowing her husband is in love with Spencer Reid long before Hotch allows himself to realize as much.

 

**viii.**

 

“Ok, we know this Tracy Donovan guy was raped by his father’s young male lover at thirteen,” Prentiss underlines, the only person in the room oblivious to the fact that Morgan squirms in his seat at the too-close-to-home reminder. “Which is precisely why I don’t get it. Even though he knew all three women from online mailing lists, why not target gay males instead of, well, ‘genetic she-males’ in the first place?” she wonders aloud, giving voice to a perplexity which, four days into the investigation, still belongs to everyone else as well.

 

Everyone except Derek, apparently. “Maybe he blames his own mother for it. Maybe deep down he thinks she couldn’t give his father what he needed and that she threw her own husband into the arms of a man. The same man who ended up scarring him for life.”

 

“Yeah… and he’s punishing what he perceives to be both the direct and indirect causes of his misery via the only people who are male and female at the same time.”Reid agrees, promptly fired with his usual awkward enthusiasm.

 

“So what do we do? Just wait for the next victim, or put AIS sufferers in Pennsylvania under federal protection?” Prentiss tests the ground with an unconvinced shrug.

 

“I say neither, guys.” JJ interjects, having just entered the room to inform the team that, ironically enough, “He just killed Brian Lowell, a 31-year-old, openly gay man from Erie.”

 

And if Emily didn’t possess excellent compartmentalization skills, she would shudder at the premonitory taste of her previous remark.

 

“Throat slit in an alley behind this club called The Zone right after his boyfriend, Justin Bingham, 23, had left.” JJ continues. “And--”

 

“Let me guess,” Morgan interrupts, raising a dejected hand, “he carved a Venus symbol on his abdomen.”

 

“Um, a little lower than that, actually.” She winces. “But yeah.”

 

“Fuck,” Emily mutters. “Um, sorry, sir,” she immediately says to Gideon, who smiles sadly and just as inscrutably.

 

“Such an abrupt change in victimology can only mean--” Hotch begins.

 

“--he’s devolving,” Gideon concludes.

 

“Guys?” Reid draws everyone’s attention back after a short, thought-laden pause. “Donovan’s geographical pattern is anything but random: not only is he obviously killing people in Pennsylvania’s biggest cities, he’s actually travelling through them in diminishing order of population.”

 

“Which means the next crime scene could very well be…?” Morgan urges.

 

“Reading. Population 81,207,” Reid offers.

 

**ix.**

 

“Do you think you can do this, guys?” Morgan asks Hotch and Reid after Garcia only half-jokingly proposed they pretend to be a gay couple to lure in the former UnSub and, much to her own surprise, was taken seriously.

 

Thanks in no small part to Prentiss’ encouraging suggestion that the age difference between her boss and youngest teammate, while not abysmal, might prove substantial enough to trigger the killer’s new raptus, simply by mirroring the age gap between Donovan and his own rapist. 

 

Neither Hotch nor Reid answers; both nod the uncertain nod of the hopeful and leave to go get ready for their wild night out at Nostalgia night club.

 

\-----

 

“Spencer, you’ll have to call me *Aaron* at some point, you know that, right?”

 

“Um, yeah. That’s possibly going to be as weird as having to kiss my boss.” And if Hotch wasn’t almost moved by Reid’s socially-challenged attempt at wit, he’d let himself be hurt by his verbal choice of _having to_.

 

“Is this your way of telling us you’d rather kiss Morgan?”

 

Reid groans at the absurdity of such a scenario and suddenly wishes he wasn’t always the one on the receiving end of Hotch’s rusty sense of humor.

 

Of course, the fact that JJ, Prentiss and Garcia are giggling like teenyboppers at a Backstreet Boys meet ‘n’ greet doesn’t help matters any.

 

And if cradling Hotch’s face in his hands and placing a chaste yet solid kiss on his mouth is the only way he can get this rehearsal thing over with, who’s he not to sacrifice himself for a greater good?

 

“So? Was it believable enough, ladies?”

 

“It—it was hot as hell, is what it was.” Penelope babbles, while Emily and JJ only cough their way out of blatant gaping.

 

\-----

 

But then it’s 11 p.m. and there’s sweat along Reid’s hairline. Sweat, from the sultriness of the dance floor and from a crippling fear that too tight a squeeze on the other man’s silk shirt—a suspiciously lingering brush of his tongue against Hotch’s, might betray the full, so very unprofessional scope of his feelings for him.

 

**x.**

 

The Donovan case is gone but not forgotten and fifteen months of dust have already piled up on the file when April comes again; unfortunately, though, it’s not the first day of the month anymore when Reid shows Hotch the letter Gideon has left for him at the cabin, so they’re not even granted a lousy chance to conjecture an April Fool’s joke from their boss-slash-teammate, however unlikely in itself.

 

What Hotch doesn’t tell Reid—maybe someday, he tells himself instead—is that he, too, has received a letter from Jason. And, even without Reid’s eidetic memory, he has already managed to commit most of it to memory.

 

To learn it _by heart_.

 

And the expression, if cheesy, has never sounded more appropriate.

 

 

 _:: You once told me I sometimes forget people need to know they’re important, remember? Well, I believe_ he _needs to know just how important he is, Hotch._

_I know you—all of us, really—sometimes let the fact that he’s so incredibly smart and perceptive overwhelm you, to the point where it can get intimidating. And I’m aware it must sound horribly hypocritical of me to say this when it looks like I’m abandoning him, but now, of all times, is when you cannot be allowed the luxury of forgetting he’s little more than a kid._

_No, scratch that._

_He’s a son. A brother. A friend. He’s part of a family. And he needs to be reminded of that when he starts doubting himself just because_ I _was pavid and selfish and weak._

_And I believe he needs to hear it from_ you _. ::_

 

**xi.**

 

“Remember that list of _twenty-five things you must do before you die_ Gideon compiled two years ago?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I’ve made one myself.”

 

“Oh? Ok.”

 

“I’m down to number twenty-four. And it’s about us.” He takes a deep breath before blurting it out like he’d shed an itchy old sweater he’s insanely fond of but can’t stand anymore. “I’m in love with someone else.”

 

“I know, Aaron,” she says, all too soothingly, after mere seconds that feel like decades to Hotch.

 

“What do you mean you—but how?” Had Haley been there when Reid had said _“_ _I choose Aaron Hotchner ”_ to Raphael, she would have been able to recognize the same sober, yet petrified, mask of shock on her husband’s face.

 

“They say bad company brings bad habits, right? Well, you don’t live with a profiler for fifteen years without picking up a couple of tricks.” And her smile _seems_ so radiant he wonders, if only for an instant, if he’s not making a giant mistake. The kind he might live to regret.

 

But then she brings him back to contingency. “I never thought it possible—and, trust me, there are days when it still kills me to admit it, if only to myself—but he loves you even more and better” ( _unconditionally_ , is what she thinks and doesn’t say) “than I’m capable of. And I cannot be the one who takes something like that from you.”And, in spite of the ill-disguised resentment dodging the reins of her words, he can see the rightness of it all with astounding clarity.

 

He would even question her improbable selflessness, if he didn’t remember odd afternoon phone calls, the kind where he’d find himself on the receiving end of an all too telltale silence. He would put up a bitter fight against his own cause, if only to have her bend and break like he would a suspect in the interrogation room.

 

But he can’t bring himself to care anymore.

 

He looks down at the crumpled piece of paper in between his left index and thumb and, selfishly enough, what he sees there is all he’s inclined to care about at that very moment.

 

_# 25 – Tell Spencer._

 

 

**xii.**

 

“I’m not saying I could ever play such a crucial role in anybody’s life—hell, even my own father didn’t blink twice before letting my schizophrenic mother raise me!” Reid confides, in a frantic, laugh-like crashing of words that makes Hotch’s blood run dry. “I’m just wondering if maybe Gideon feels like he’s failed with me…”

 

“Failed you how?”

 

“Not failed *me*. *With* me. Because of, you know… what happened after Tobias.”

 

“Reid, don’t do this to yourself. You’re such a brilliant *creature*--”

 

“Don—don’t ever call me that.” Reid grimaces when faced, once again, with the only word that can make him feel like a Great Depression circus freak. Even coming from Hotch.

 

Who’s sure he won’t again. If only because it’s one of those moments where Hotch himself is hit with a gashing reminder, of times when _excellent profiler_ automatically translated into _terrible husband and father_ , instead.

 

Then, almost imperceptibly, indignation crosses a thin line into tired understanding when Reid adds a strained “Please.”

 

One that breaks Hotch’s heart and his resolve not to touch him.

 

\-----

 

The kiss is welcome salt in the wound of both souls and the fact that _this_ may or may not have been what Gideon meant by his letter is just another thing Hotch can’t pretend to care about anymore.

 

So he keeps on kissing Reid, so compliant and intimidatingly vulnerable in his arms. He _marks_ him with the cleansing fire of memories in the making, with chasing nibbles on the boy’s lips that give way to equally full of longing, open-mouthed touches.

 

Reid smiles lazily into the kisses, as if he’d been doing this forever; he lets his teeth clumsily clash against Hotch’s upper lip, only to teasingly lick inside the corner of his mouth.

 

Hotch never knew that such undiluted trust, the raw familiarity of Reid’s gestures, could turn his world upside-down-and-up-again; and the feeling that he’s never going to have enough of such vibrancy has a terrifying quality to it.

 

\-----

 

Buried deep within Spencer—tangled limbs hot and rippling like plump tendrils—is when he inconveniently remembers he has the hateful duty to put a screeching halt to whatever this is.

 

Before the bugbear of fraternization rules is reduced to even more of a pitiful puppet. ****

Then he’s heavy and spent under the maddening pressure of sharp angles and chiseled skin, and yet “Spencer, we shouldn’t…” is all he needs to _force_ out of his mouth before Reid is out the door, a ghost on his suddenly ice-cold lips.

 

**xiii.**

 

Hotch doesn’t know whether to be relieved or crushed when Reid does _not_ call in sick the following day.

 

So he settles for both. And throws in a generous pinch of self-hatred for good measure.

 

He meets Reid’s eyes once, during a briefing in a PD room full of typical profiler-allergic officers, and what he finds there is a quiet resignation which he can’t help but see through the shards of a broken promise.

 

_I will never take him for granted._

 

**xiv.**

 

On the days that follow, Hotch’s commitment to getting the case solved as soon as possible molds into a composed frenzy; and he’s bitterly grateful his not-so-secret fallout with Haley is what the team is betting on to make sense of his especially obsessive demeanor.

 

He’s also thankful Jason is not there to read him like a beginners’ recipe book.

 

As if having to face the music of Erin Strauss’ orchestra, humoring her with scripted reasons as to why he’s requesting a transfer, was not enough.

 

 

Caught up as he is in the pity-party he’s throwing right out of the lion’s den, he does not even notice Reid—just as absentmindedly gravitating towards him along the corridor—until his hands are latching onto the sleeves of the younger man’s shirt to prevent the both of them from falling in the collision.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“Not your fault,” Hotch amends, taking his time to stare into Reid’s eyes. A tearful _"I knew you’d understand."_ flashes back into his worn-out mind and he hopes Reid, too, understands. That he can mind-read the other 19.997 words Hotch is not saying.

 

“When are you leaving?”

 

He knows better than to even _wonder_ how Reid guessed what he’s gone out of his way to keep a secret, however temporary. “Next Thursday,” he concedes, balancing case files on his right arm to slide a small box up from beneath them. “Which is why I wanted to give you this. Happy birthday.”

 

“Um. Hotch, my birthday is five months away.” Reid points out, half-offended, half-amused.

 

“I know. But I… may not be around to give it to you then.”

 

Reid never knew _may not be_ could so easily—painfully—translate into _won’t be_. “Do you want me to open it now?”

 

“As you like.” And a warm smile – that rekindles Reid’s oddly fond memories of failed firearm qualifications, pretend kicks and an ambulance – graces Hotch’s ever-reassuring, if haggard, features.

 

Reid starts cracking through the wrapping paper like the impatient five-year-old he is at heart and swallows long and hard when his fingers, eagerly at first, then almost reverently, find themselves rubbing the cover of a signed first edition of _Fahrenheit 451_.

 

And he just hates that he can’t hate Hotch.

 

Not even a little.

 

 

**xv.**

 

October rolls around in a blend of cold rain and pearl-grey skies that Reid doesn’t find entirely unpleasant.

 

At least not until Penelope is shot.

 

 

Spencer knows it’s despicable, to say the least, to be jealous of Garcia—bullet-in-her-chest Garcia, for crying out loud!—just because _she_ is what brings Hotch back to Quantico.

 

Except he _is_ jealous.

 

And he lets Hotch know just how much in the on-call room of the hospital, the mother of all clichés. Even if it feels like the most degrading thing he’s ever had to do since _"Head in the Toilet and Flush, Pussy Boy!"_ in High School.

 

“Was it just to--to get your rocks off because Haley left?” But he immediately regrets the accusation, all too aware that the only reason Hotch put over four hundred miles between them is that he is the epitome of not being ‘that guy’.

 

“You know it wasn’t like that.”

 

“No. Sorry. Of course, I--I know. But *you* knew we didn’t stand a chance. And, God, how could you not see how in-over-my-head I was? Wasn’t it obvious enough?! Me, following you around like a lovesick puppy for years, dammit!”

 

“Reid--”

 

“And how could you do that to me when you know *everything* there is to know about my textbook abandonment issues?”

 

“Reid--”

 

“I fucking let you inside of me, Hotch!” As if that could say it all.

 

(Except it kind of does.)

 

“SPENCER!” He thunders, when the guilty quiver of arousal sparked by such forlorn words has sizzled up and died. Once he has recovered from the mild shock of seeing Reid swear like that and try to rub wild, angry tears back into his eyes.

 

And, somehow, that gets through to him, because Reid is looking at Hotch, all big _Sad Sam™_ eyes and that obscene open mouth of his. “You’re bleeding.” Hotch says, pointing at Reid’s lower lip before he gently presses him against the scrubs shelf—shielding the back of Reid’s head with one hand—and sucks the offended lip in between his own.

 

 

“Is this what you just barked at me for?”

 

Hotch shakes his head. “I convinced Strauss to give me another chance at the BAU.”

 

“Oh.” Then, “Please tell me you didn’t have to sleep with her.” Hotch never knew just how much he’d missed the caustic teasing.

 

“Shut up.”

 

“I’m serious. She clearly has the hots for you!”

 

“In that case, I’ll have her know I’m spoken for. I mean… I am, right?”

 

 

**xvi.**

 

“Reid, a word? In my office, please? When you’re done sneaking glances at my brother, that is.” And a mixture of cruel amusement and guilt creeps under Hotch’s skin as soon as he notices the enormous discomfort he’s caused his reclaimed lover.

 

“Whoa. What was *that*?” Garcia whispers into Morgan’s ear before swapping a flabbergasted look with both JJ and Emily.

 

“I would say sarcasm *and* jealousy if we weren’t talking about Aaron Hotchner, here.” Prentiss offers, with a destabilized frown on her face that brings out JJ’s fond smile.

 

“Oh my god, I had no idea Reid was bi,” JJ adds, with the enigmatic expression of someone who has just come across a familiar smell they can’t decide if it’s pleasantly sweet or revoltingly so.

 

“Isn't everybody?” And the perplexed ‘Morgan look’ such rhetorical question earns Garcia is priceless, she finds.

 

\-----

 

“You didn’t have to do that, you know.” Even Reid himself is surprised when he manages the statement without so much as a chink of hurt in his own voice.

 

“I know.”

 

“You can be pretty mean, Hotch.”

 

“I know that, too. But you’re too hot when you’re squirming in your own skin.”

 

“Flattering will only get you so far,” says Reid, lips twitching nervously before they surrender to an irrepressible smile.

 

“I can live with that.” And it takes the span of a muffled yelp for Reid to find himself occupying the narrow, red-hot space between Hotch’s body and the office door. Hotch’s left hand gets busy unbuttoning Reid’s khakis, which gives him the perfect angle to encircle the younger man’s hips with his right arm and surreptitiously lock the door.

 

The awkward move pushes their bodies sublimely closer and, all of a sudden, ‘awkward’ and ‘uncomfortable’ aren’t part of Reid’s articulate vocabulary anymore. All of a sudden, there’s only room for ‘yearn’ and ‘crave’ and ‘desire’; and as many lame synonyms as his proverbial memory can send straight to his groin before Hotch sucks on his Adam’s apple and murmurs “Or *this*,” against the skin behind his ear.

**xvii.**

 

“I think we should keep this to ourselves. At least for a while.”

 

“I don’t want to be your dirty little secret. And I sure don’t want you to be mine, Spence. Especially when both Strauss and Rossi already know.” And the fact that Hotch is so unmistakably proud of him—of what they are _—_ makes him want to do all sorts of things to (oh, the irony) his _supervisor_.

 

Things he’s never wanted to do to anyone else, not even Hollywood damsels in distress.

 

Like pull Hotch by the loose, ever-present tie into an excruciatingly slow kiss that leaves them both a boneless heap of exhausted joy against the refrigerator in Reid’s apartment. 

 

“It’s not about that. I know—I believe the guys… even Morgan, will be all right with, um, *this*.” Reid says, making an endearingly self-conscious gesture between them. “I just think it would be fun to, you know, sneak around a little. See how long it takes them to figure it out. To *profile* us.”

 

Hotch’s face turns into such a serious mask of concentration that Reid’s stomach is starting to knot when his lover finally states, as if releasing an especially challenging profile, “You’ve been watching season 5 of _Friends_. Again.” And punctuates his deduction with a resonant kiss on Reid’s forehead.

 

“I have NOT!” He does his best at mock indignation, even Hotch has to give him that. “I mean, I have, but that’s besides the point. Look at Morgan and Garcia and their endless flirting… don’t you ever want that, too?” The impish yet naive way he asks the question makes Reid look like a fourteen-year-old at best, and Hotch knows he should feel guilty for finding it so arousing when half of their working time is spent chasing pedophiles across the country. But he doesn’t. And he makes sure Reid knows that.

 

Twice.

 

 

**xviii.**

 

“Not to brag or anything, buuut…”

 

“But what, Emily.” And, already, his eyes are beginning to roll.

 

“I *so* knew.”

 

“Mm. How? Do tell.” She appreciates that he doesn’t even try to offend her intelligence by playing dumb about what he knows she’s referring to, even when he doesn’t necessarily want to hear it.

 

“Body language 101, really. First off, I’ve noticed how you rarely shake hands when introduced to someone. You’ll just give that sullen little smile of yours,” she adds, slowly rotating her index at him and tilting her head slightly to her right, “and keep your waving hand against your chest. You did that with me when I officially joined the team and, later the same day, with the FBI agent at Guantanamo. And on many other occasions  when we’ve been paired up on a case.”

 

“So? I’m just… naturally diffident and cautious with strangers.”

 

“Oh, but you’re just as detached with Morgan...”

 

“He--he’s a big guy. He’s, um. Scary.”

 

“Yeah, right. And JJ...”

 

“We… kind of have, uh, history.”

 

“...and Rossi. Or Gideon.” She even gives him some time to think of an excuse because he amuses her more than she’s willing to admit. “But you don’t seem to have trouble initiating physical contact with Hotch. Who’s just as grumpy as Gideon was. Plus, I’ve noticed how you stand so close to him during briefings your shoulders end up touching more often than not. Not to mention the fact that you’re the only one he reserves his precious sense of humor for. And If *I* am noticing this stuff, it must be pretty darn obvious.”

 

“Um, ok. I see your point.” He concedes, looking aside, if anything because he’s amazed that she’s just delivered the same line he used with Morgan talking about none other than her. He drops his head into a short round of sheepish nodding, which causes her to smile victoriously but sweetly. “Can’t fool a profiler, huh?”

 

“You tell me. By the way, how did you two even manage to convince Strauss to accept your relationship?”

 

“We didn’t. Apparently, Rossi talked to her.”

 

“Omigod. So *that*’s what JJ meant when she said Rossi is the reason why the fraternization rules were established in the first place!”

 

“I think you may just have scarred me for life, Emily.”

 

 

**xix.**

 

Reid is slowly thumb-tracing a fleeting wrinkle on his forehead when Hotch—undeterred by cumbersome layers of wool and a ridiculously small sofa in his worship of the body on top of his own—finds what he assumes is part of Spencer’s daily letter to Diana.

 

Which, of course, Reid doesn’t let him unfold.

 

 

_:: He’s got the kind of smile that makes you feel like every aberrance we have to put up with is tolerable. Even though it’s not something you often see on him. But I’m not going to tell him to smile more, because I’m greedy and selfish like that. And I just want it for myself. ::_

 

 

Mentally going over what he’s written in it, he nestles his chin in the curve of Hotch’s neck and smiles to himself, instead.

 

“I love you, Spence.”

 

“I know. But I’m still not letting you read my note.”

 

**xx.**

 

Sometimes, on a flight back to Quantico, when he’s too tired to sleep but Morgan is listening to his headphones, Prentiss is teaching JJ how to play chess, and Hotch refuses to play cards with him because he’s a _“_ _shameless Vegas swindler_ _”_ , Spencer thinks how slim-to-none his chances of building a friendship with these people would have been if he hadn’t joined the BAU.

 

And the awareness that they (especially he and Hotch) might only have been strangers on a plane saddens him almost as much as the knowledge that they are, in fact, a family awakens proverbial butterflies in his stomach.

 

 

_‘Within you, I lose myself; without you, I find myself, searching to be lost again.’ ~ Anonymous_

  
**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> The first four lines from paragraph v. (the plane conversation scene featuring Morgan and Reid) are notably not mine. They’re from a deleted scene, originally from Season 2, Episode 16, “Fear And Loathing”, if you were wondering. Do. Not. Sue. Kthx.


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